


Nowhere Else to Go

by norgbelulah



Category: The Road to El Dorado (2000)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s a rainy season?” Tulio cries, somehow wounded.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Else to Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AntigravityDevice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntigravityDevice/gifts).



After the pillars are knocked down and the cave is flooded and they lose almost all the gold, they just tool around for a while. 

Chel holds Altivo’s reins loose and lets him wander where he wants to. Mostly it’s the path of least resistance, inevitably sloping downwards. They follow streams and rivers. Eventually they make it back to the coast and follow that in a southerly sort of way.

They come across little places--villages of friendly faces, a few families huddled in caves, a hunting party or three. They talk their way in and out of good and bad situations. Despite the fact that Tulio and Miguel never seem to have trouble making themselves understood, Chel’s grasp of the culture is invaluable.

They eat for free--or for a gold earring or so--wherever they stop. They swindle the greedy, but only ever take as much as they can carry. 

They never stay long. They’re following the trail.

Until one morning, Chel says, “We have to find a good place to stay for the rainy season.” She climbs up on Altivo’s back and tosses her hair over her shoulder.

Tulio and Miguel stare at her.

“There’s a rainy season?” Tulio cries, somehow wounded.

Miguel strokes his beard thoughtfully. He shrugs, “It makes sense. The weather has been very fair up until now.”

“You never said anything about a rainy season!” Tulio is still exploding.

“Everywhere has seasons,” Miguel points out.

“Yeah,” Chel says, quirking a brow teasingly at Tulio. “And we have to find someplace good before it starts to rain.”

Miguel hops up behind her, eyes bright. There’s an eager grin spreading across his face. “What sort of place are you thinking of?”

Altivo snorts and moves forward into a playful trot before Tulio can do the same. He shouts behind them, scrambling to catch up. “Just how much rain are we talking here?”

 

They travel at a clip that day. Chel’s eyes are narrowed as she searches the horizon through the sparse jungle in front of them. They’ve stumbled upon a wetland, with trickling streams emptying into larger lakes. It makes for slower going than she’d like.

“What are you looking for?” Tulio grumbles. Miguel thinks he’s peeved because he’s riding at the back and not pressed against Chel, as he clearly prefers.

“Not this,” she replies, distracted. “This is no good. The first storm will flood it. Only an idiot would live here. We need a place no one wants any more, but it’s got to be good. Dry.”

She turns Altivo inland, uphill. There might be caves in the mountains in the distance.

“We’ll follow this to the source,” she says, indicating the stream they’ve just jumped across. 

Tulio doesn’t think she’s talking to anyone in particular. He frowns, feeling out of his depth, clinging to Miguel’s bony hips. He sets his jaw. It would be good to stop for a while. Just a little while. So they can rest. Build their strength. Eat more than what they can ethically schill from people just scraping by in the wilds of this untamed country. 

Miguel leans back slightly into Tulio, responding unconsciously to the tightness of his hold. 

They’ve gotten quite good at riding all together on Altivo’s broad back. Miguel rarely holds on anymore, unless something surprising happens or they let Altivo have his head and canter across whatever open trails they find. Tulio’s less confident as a horseman, even without riding three astride, but still--he seldom clings so tightly.

He glances back. “Do you want to switch?”

Tulio frowns at him, confused. “No.”

Miguel shrugs.

Chel pays them no mind. She can smell the rain in the air.

 

They don’t find a good place before the first storm. They huddle around the trunk of a giant tree and cover their heads with wide leaves. When it’s over, Miguel stands up, smiling and stretching, and says, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”

“Yeah,” Tulio agrees. “Why do we have to find a place at all? Let’s just get a tent. I don’t know why we don’t have one already.”

Chel shakes her head. She gestures emphatically with her hands, making an x, swiping at the air as if it’s the idea itself. “Can’t travel in the wet. The storms drop out of nowhere. For days. This? This was nothing. We need a place. Not just a tent. We gotta find it now.”

Tulio has his hands on his hips and he’s frowning again. He looks up at the sky, then back to her, then up at the sky again. She’s thinking he better not argue with her. He’s thinking she can’t really be serious.

Then it starts to rain.

“Okay,” he says.

Miguel and Altivo had followed the stream a few paces and both now turn back excitedly to Tulio and Chel. “What about this?” Miguel calls as Altivo whinnies excitedly.

“This” is a tiny bungalow set into a thick wall of rock. Chel grins.

“Is anyone inside?” Tulio stage whispers.

“Nope,” Miguel answers, poking his head through the door. “But there’s a bunch of stuff.” He spies a fire pit in the center of the structure and pots and bowls set atop a shelf along the wall. Large baskets store some kind of dried good and a spout seems to be collecting the rainwater into a barrel in the corner.

Miguel nods appreciatively. If they have to stay somewhere. This is pretty nice.

Chel moves past where Altivo has stuck only his head inside the door. She does a little dance. They can stay dry now, at least.

“Well, if there’s a bunch of stuff, mightn’t that indicate someone is coming back?” Tulio’s voice from the doorway rises again with anxiety.

“We can deal with that when it happens,” Chel says waving her hand at him.

“If,” Miguel puts in helpfully.

Tulio glowers again as Miguel exclaims, “There’s enough room in here for Altivo too!” He pats Altivo’s head.

Chel sidles up to him, reaching up to rub her thumb at the corner of his mouth until it quirks traitorously. She beams. “You’re just grumpy it’s not your plan.”

“Plan?” he asks, leaning away, but letting the smile she wanted bloom across his face. “This is hardly a plan. This is a non-plan. A not-at-all-a--”

She silences him with a kiss, which he returns, enthusiastically.

They’re startled apart by Miguel’s cough. When they turn to him, he’s sidling over to the doorway. “Ohh,” he says casually. “No, don’t mind me. I’ll just be over…” he trails off as he stops short at the threshold. It’s raining quite a bit harder now. “Here,” he finishes lamely.

Chel smiles like nothing awkward just happened and walks over to the fire pit. “Don’t do that,” she tells Miguel. “Come over here and help me start a fire.” She looks between her boys, another plan formulating.

Tulio’s head is still swimming from Chel’s kiss. “What should I do?” he asks, without thinking. He catches Miguel smirking at him and rolls his eyes. Miguel does as Chel says and Tulio walks over the the doorway. It really is coming down now.

“I guess it was good we found this place,” Tulio muses.

Chel smirks too and meets Miguel’s laughing eyes. He passes kindling to her and she arranges it in a cross hatch pattern and then in a little pyramid. He takes up the flint and strikes it. When the kindling catches, it’s her breath that fuels the fire.

She takes his hand as they feed more wood into the blaze. He glances at her, startled, and then looks back to Tulio, who is still gazing out the door. She smiles softly. “I’m glad you’re here,” she tells him quietly.

“Me too,” Tulio says. He’s turned to them now. His expression seems serious and Miguel searches his eyes.

They haven’t talked about any of this. There has been no sorting of the tangle of betrayal, hurt, and confusion of the last few days spent in El Dorado. The decision had been made for them. No one was bitter, not even Miguel, but he doesn’t really known where he fits anymore. Not with Tulio after their argument and certainly not now that Chel is here.

“You don’t want to be alone?” Miguel asks. He looks around and it’s abundantly clear that’s not going to happen any time soon. There’s nowhere else to go. The fire is warming his back as he looks up at Tulio.

Tulio and Miguel have been a lot of things to each other in a lot of different ways over the years. They aren’t strangers to sharing touches, sharing beds, sharing each other. They fall in and out of love daily, in and out of lust when convenient. They’ve fought over women too. But never shared one.

There had never been anyone big enough to share them, or, frankly, to survive them.

Tulio think Chel’s done the last thing already, so why not the first. It sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. 

Chel’s lips twist. She’s thinking they’re idiots. They’ve been dancing around this for weeks. Even before the cave flooded and the pillars were knocked down. She more than half wanted to find a place like this so neither of them had anywhere to go but into her bed.

She doesn’t care if they know each other’s bodies already. She knows their minds and their hearts and she wants it all for herself. The bodies are just a special bonus.

She says, “Honey, we wanna be alone with you.”

Miguel stares at her. Then at Tulio, who looks almost as scared. Then, like a wave on sand, a grin breaks across his face. “Oh. Oh, good,” he says. “Well that sounds lovely.”

Altivo whinnies a protest.

“All right,” Tulio says rubbing his hands together, a wicked twinkle in his eyes. “Let’s get rid of the horse and then we can--”

Another offended whinny and various noises from Miguel, who scrambles to his feet and rushes over to Tulio, pushing and pulling at him. They do a strange little dance, like a cha-cha, as Tulio tries to push Altivo toward the door and Miguel valiantly attempts to stop him. “We can’t just put him out in the rain!”

Tulio’s voice rises in tandem with Miguel’s. “But don’t you want to--”

“Boys, boys, boys,” Chel half sings as she sashays between them. “The rain won’t last so long. The storms break. They come back. They break and come back. But we stay here. We got all the time we need.”

Tulio cups her cheek in his big hand. Miguel clasps her hand in his own, tugs it up to his heart.

Altivo groans, rolls his eyes, and walks out into the rain. It’s letting up now anyway.


End file.
